JR Valrey Is an Agent Provocateur

The KPFA producer is not your typical police reporter. He grew close to
accused criminal Yusuf Bey IV. He was arrested for arson in the Oakland
riots. Now he's speaking up for cop killer Lovelle Mixon.

Ali ThanawallaKPFA producer JR Valrey has become as polarizing within the radio station as his journalism is within the Bay Area.

Ali ThanawallaValrey got the only interviews with accused torturer and liquor-store vandal Yusuf Bey IV by treating him like a respected member of the community.

Valrey has become the most prominent member of a growing anti-police movement.

On January 7, the streets of Oakland erupted into an orgy of
property damage when a protest honoring murdered Hayward resident Oscar
Grant turned violent. Helicopters buzzed over the downtown skyline, and
you could feel tension in the air. Eyewitness accounts tell of
protesters breaking store windows, setting cars on fire, and throwing
bottles from rooftops. Videos show angry mobs trying to tip over police
cars as officers in riot gear hung from the sides of an armored truck.
By the time the rioting was quelled, more than one hundred people had
been arrested. Journalist JR Valrey was among them.

One week before, in the early hours of New Year's Day, Grant had
been shot in the back by BART cop Johannes Mehserle at the Fruitvale
BART station. Cell-phone footage of the shooting was soon all over the
Internet, and the protest was organized to demand justice for the slain
22-year-old and his family. Valrey attended not so much as an observer
but as a participant.

Valrey is what you might call an advocacy journalist. With his KPFA
radio segement The Block Report, his job as associate editor for
San Francisco Bay View newspaper, and his position as the
so-called "Minister of Information" for the Prisoners of Conscience
Committee (POCC), he has become known for covering police shootings.
When he reached the protest, he did something no mainstream journalist
would do: He took the mike and spoke to the crowd, demanding justice
not just for Grant, but also for other victims of police violence.

By sunset the protest was dying down, and Valrey says he left to
meet some friends. But about one hour later, he says he got a call that
there was rioting downtown. When he returned, he saw dozens of police
in a huge circle on 14th Street and Broadway, occupying the
intersection in front of City Hall. According to his Bay View
article "Oakland rebellion: Eyewitness report by POCC Minister of
Information JR," protesters shouted slogans at the police as angry
bands of people smashed car windshields and storefronts with
skateboards, their feet, and other objects. Valrey said he began taking
photographs.

Mayor Ron Dellums soon made an appearance, walking through the angry
crowd, as Valrey put it, "like black Jesus." The mayor made his way
across Broadway to the Civic Center area and then delivered a short
speech in which he called for civility to prevail. Valrey says Dellums
was swiftly booed off stage and retreated back to the safety of City
Hall. The rioting soon resumed. Windows were smashed, cars and trash
cans were set ablaze, and protesters taunted officers or lay down in
front of police lines with their faces down and their hands behind
their backs, mimicking the posture of Oscar Grant when he was shot.
According to Valrey's article, the police began breaking into groups of
six or seven and rushing rioters, tackling and arresting anyone in the
vicinity.

Valrey says two officers chased and tackled him while he was taking
photographs by the Federal Building. He spent the night in Santa Rita
Jail and was charged with felony arson, which carries a possible
sentence of three years in a state penitentiary. In all, 160 people
were arrested on the night of January 7, mostly on misdemeanor charges.
All but ten subsequently had the charges against them dropped. Just
four people, including Valrey, are still facing felony charges.

Oakland police would not release information describing the events
the leading up to his arrest. Valrey also declined to go into greater
detail, claiming that he doesn't want to compromise his defense. But he
insists that he is innocent. "I have no history of arson, when I was
arrested there was no lighter, no matches, not even paper to light
anything."

Valrey claims his arrest was payback for his years of covering
police brutality. "I was covering it as a journalist," he said. "But
one thing that's different about me from the rest of the rebels is that
the Oakland police know me. ... I'm not a stranger to the power
structure of Oakland, so I believe like many others that I was targeted
politically. ... We were basically set up on trumped-up charges."

His lawyer, Marlon Monroe, says the case against Valrey is weak and
will fail: "There's no physical evidence that they can pin on JR,
despite the fact that there were several officers who witnessed the
arrest, as well as news cameras."

In the meantime, the arrest has given Valrey plenty of fodder for
The Block Report and the Bay View. In the weeks since the
riots, he has written eyewitness accounts, interviewed people present
at the rioting, and run radio shows interviewing family members of
Oscar Grant. He hasn't hesitated to use the KPFA airwaves and pages of
the Bay View to call for community support in fighting his
felony charges.

But Valrey hasn't just covered the riots and their aftermath. He has
participated in "town bizness meetings" focused on what Valrey calls
"police terrorism." He has helped organize POCC political actions,
including a boycott of BART on what would have been Grant's 23rd
birthday. And he has defended the Oakland riots as a necessary means of
getting the city's attention.

Valrey has become the mouthpiece of an anti-police movement that has
grown since Grant's shooting. He even defends the actions of cop killer
Lovelle Mixon as a "heroic day of resistance against the police." As
unpopular as these sentiments make him in many quarters, he has become
a beacon for the anger that smoulders among some members of Oakland's
black community.